El mercado de TODO

Today I went with Jamsine, Debra, and Tyler to the Mercado de Abastos, a giant covered marketplace to the southwest that is open every Saturday. If there is something you'd be interesting in buying, they have it there (along with hundreds of things you have no interest in whatsoever). Jasmine and I had some taquitos; she bought a skirt and Debra bought a few other things. It was pretty crazy, and it was quite a long walk there, and then we spent the entire time walking around at the market, and then walked home. I'm pretty worn out, so I'm just hanging out at home until we go out later for Kristen's birthday. We're going to a pretty popular bar/restaurant for dinner and then afterwards to a bar/club that apparently has trapeze artists. Who knew?

Click the pictures to enlarge:

From left to right...
Top: fruits; taquitos with chicken, onion, salsa, and cilantro; grapefruit with chili-salt.
Middle: meats; a mountain of mole negro; dried chilies.
Bottom: headless chickens; bean necklaces; garlic.

I had a really nice time last night: Jasmine, Tyler, Clay, Ronan and I wandered around down by the Zocalo, and found our way to the basillica of Oaxaca, La Soledad. In front of the church are seven different nieverias, or ice cream stands (the word used for ice cream here is the same as the word for snow). After that we had some beers and Tyler and I had tapas at a restaurant with a balcony overlooking Santa Domingo, and we ended up at a bar down the street called La Divina which has live music three times a week and no cover charge. We arrived just as the second band started, and they played all English language songs, which as fun because everyone else in the bar, all Mexicans, knew all the lyrics.